Hello all I'm having a bit of a nightmare with the WiFi on my laptop. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad x61s (brilliant machine, btw) with the Intel 4965AGN Wireless card, and my router is a Virgin Media Superhub (a rebadged Netgear CG3101D, latest firmware). Virgin only supports their Superhub on connections of 50mbps or more (due to DOCSIS3.0), and I can't put the Superhub in modem-only mode to test another router, as I don't have another router to test with! Every now and then, my laptop will suddenly decide to stop seeing the access point. This happened yesterday when I was copying a large file across the network, but has happened before now. I was at a friend's house a few weeks ago and it simply refused to see their access point - even though my friend's laptop could - then refused to connect to my home AP. Yesterday it disconnected from my access point in the middle of a file transfer and my AP would no longer appear in the list of available networks; yet it will see other access points nearby without a problem, even those with practically no signal strength (though I can't connect to these, as they're password-protected). This router can be a bit cack when it comes to WiFi - no external antenna, and shockingly bad signal strength - so I rebooted both router and laptop and that seemed to correct the issue. I came back to my laptop a few hours later and it won't see the AP again. I can still see other APs and both of our phones can see/use the AP, but my laptop simply can't find it. I switched the router off overnight - overkill, I know - but the problem still persists this morning after booting the router. I've tried all manner of disabling/re-enabling the hardware (physical switch and BIOS option) and re-installed the drivers. I haven't done anything special to the WiFi config on the router, other than reserve a few IP addresses for wired devices and added a password - it still broadcasts the SSID and there's no MAC address whitelist in place. I do run the router in mixed 802.11g/n mode, as my phone does not support 802.11n, but this does not cause a problem for other 802.11g/n-capable (such as my partner's phone). I don't think the network card itself is shafted, as it sees other APs and normally works just fine. It can even see the WiFi AP that my phone can create. I'm going to try the network in 802.11n-only mode later, to see if mixed-g/n mode is confusing the card (though I doubt that too, as it does usually work), and I'll also try switching channels again. This is a very odd problem that I've not come across before owning this laptop. Aside from being a knackered WiFi card (which I doubt), knackered drivers (which should have been corrected) or just a pile of cack router (which I can't avoid), does anyone else have any other suggestions? EDIT: Thread tag changed....
Are you directly connecting to the superhub via wireless? You just mention access points: your not using range extenders or anything? Try setting the wireless speed in the superhub from 300 to 145 Mbps.
Also, the wireless chip in our netbook refuses to see any wireless signal higher than channel 11. Could be something similar.
My bad. Nope, no fancy extenders or additional access points, just straight to the router. Nailed it, though. Got home about 20 minutes ago and it still wouldn't see the AP. So I got hold of WiFi Analyzer on my phone, just to check the channel congestion, and noticed that the router was using channel 13 (it was set to automatic channel assignment), but there were other nearby networks on channels 8 & 10. Changed it to channel 3 - totally unpopulated - and right before my eyes the little POS suddenly found the signal. Could be something similar. Though it still baffles me as it works 99% of the time, but when that 1% crops up I can't seem to get it working for a couple of days. Googling "Intel 4965agn channel 13" suggests that some models of this card do not support channel 13, based on where it was purchased (EDIT: apparently some countries don't allow the use of channel 12 & 13). But it should be perfectly fine to use channel 13 in Europe, and the card has worked when the router was broadcasting on channel 13. Odd. I'd switch it to 5GHz instead of 2.4GHz, but no other WiFi device in the house supports 5GHz...
Yeah, this thing just refuses to use channel 13 rather than it being a dodge connection. Must've been the channel congestion. Glad it's sorted.
